Cursed Night Market

[pantheraliam]

Welcome

You’re not sure how you got here, but you don’t seem to mind. You feel a pervasive sense of calm with regard to your environment. You have entered what appears to be a night market. Perhaps the concept is familiar to you, or perhaps it isn’t. Colorful stalls, glowing with lantern light, line the path before you. You know what you need to do to return to where you came from. Investigate the various stalls - buy and sell what you have, until you’re able to purchase a path back. The merchants will take any currency that you have on hand. If you don’t have any, you will find some coins of an ambiguous nature in your pocket.

Rare Items

The first stall that you encounter boasts that you can buy and sell rare items. After trading a coin, the merchant hands you something - insists you take it. You don’t recognize the item, but the person behind you does. It is something extremely dear to them. If they check their person, they will find the item missing. If you attempt to return the item to them, you will find that you are unable to. Helpfully, the merchant offers that the person the item belongs to must tell the buyer a story about the item before it can be returned.

Fortunes

The second stall you encounter claims to buy and sell fortunes. Trading a coin, the merchant will relay to you a fortune, but, as you listen, you realize that it isn’t your fortune at all. With a cackle, the merchant explains that you must deliver the fortune with the person behind you. Neither of you can leave the booth until you have revealed to them their future.

Memories

The third stall you encounter claims to buy and sell memories. You can choose to sell the merchant a memory you would like to forget, or you can ask to buy someone else’s memory. Selling your memory will transfer it to the person behind you. In return, you will gain one of their memories. Buying a random memory will instead cause you to forget one of the people most important to you. In some instances, you might feel a great urgency to find someone, although you don't know who it is.

Dreams

The fourth stall you encounter claims to buy and sell dreams. Trading a coin at this stall will cause you and the person behind you to be transported into a shared dream. The dream may be about the highest point in your life or the lowest. It may also be about a close friend, there or gone. It may reveal your greatest desire or your greatest insecurity. Or any number of other things!

OOC notes

Suggestions on prompts: if you’re going to write one where someone will be seeing/receiving something from your character, it’s helpful to describe it in detail in the brackets in your TL. I know some of these prompts are probably a little confusing, but, I mean…it’s roleplay. Just fuck around. No one’s gonna police how you do things here.

Please feel free to top-level, tag in, and share this meme wherever you’d like - it is open to anyone. The four stalls mentioned are prompt suggestions, but you can go crazy and have any stall do basically anything you want. Please see/use subject line CWs. This musebox doesn’t have a dedicated rule list because it’s just for my personal shit, but please be kind, follow standard RP rules - just be nice! Do the right thing! If you have any questions, hit me up here.

code by Flyleaf ❖ inspired by event code by 10billionghosts ❖ background via unsplash

Comments

Eren Jaeger | Attack on Titan | closed prompts

[abandonhumanity]

((ooc: lmk if you want to do something with this guy, and we can probably come up with something! I'm down for canon, AU, CRAU - any of it; let me know if you want pre-timeskip eren instead - that's fine too - and just hmu pm or pantheraliam if u need to))

closed to placatioN WITH NO S

[abandonhumanity]

[Reality is a mutable thing; memory endures, despite. These are the principles that provide the foundation of Maruki and Eren's friendship.

[It's more than that, though. It's more than anyone else can understand. Two would-be, could-be, will-be gods with the ability to create anything, to manipulate anything, to do anything - to heal, to save, to destroy, to ruin.

[He knew him in one reality, then another; more, probably.

[Here. Now. It's been four years, or only a few months - maybe only a few minutes, for all Eren knows. Maruki is there, just like he always is. He's a bleeding werewolf hunter in a dead-leaved forest, or a counselor in a familiar office; a familiar face on a family farm, or, maybe, come to think of it, that Marleyian doctor who was kinder than all of the others. What did he look like again?

[And who is Eren? Eren is Eren is Eren, as always, as ever Eren. They are two who exist outside of time, logic, sense. He knows his friend will remember him. He doesn't doubt for a moment.

[He approaches Maruki, older than he was the last time he saw him, or maybe the same age. Maybe Seven was yesterday, or maybe Somnius will be tomorrow.

[Right now, they're here. Eren Jaeger inclines his head toward his old friend.]

I thought I might run into you.

[placation]

[ Maruki has been

in a tea house with Kurusu leaning over the table to look him in the eye and swear to save him over and over and over, pressed up against a wall with a blade in his stomach, drunk on a balcony letting every festering wound of his heart ice over in the frigid air, cleaned up and interrogated over coffee, in and out of that goddamn Amplitheater again and again and again–

and he's been

sat on the couch in a dreamtime facsimile of his office over and over and over, pressed down against the ground with shards of glass embedded in his eyes and a rock smashed against his throat, tipsy in a dimly lit tavern brushing his lips over the back of a graceful and powerful hand, patched up and comforted in a broken down department store, in and out of that goddamn Labyrinth again and again and again–

and he's

with Eren eating lunch on the floor of a cramped counseling office, with Eren in the dusty marketplace of a distant planet that didn't really exist, with Eren in the palm of a Titan's hand, with Eren on a futuristic city's darkened street where he's about to be turned loose, with Eren holding him as he cries and grieves on a castle sofa, with Eren as glassy eyes stare blankly at him through discussions on the value of kindness, with Eren underneath a tree on a peaceful summer day, with Eren on a forest floor trying to breathe as he's stitched back together by shaking hands, with Eren on a forest floor in a circle of flickering lantern light baring the worst of their abilities in kind–

and he's

here–

with Eren.

A beat. A breath. A tremendous smile that breaks out over his face all at once, wide and warm, as an arm hooks around his shoulders in a gesture he neither expects nor needs to be returned. ]

I'd ask what the odds are, but I think we both know.

cw: suicidal ideation (as ever)

[abandonhumanity]

[The Eren that met Maruki in Somnius stopped wanting to be touched once he found himself too sickening, and the Eren that met Maruki in Seven couldn't afford to want to be touched, but the truth is, the real Eren - who is, ever Eren, at his core - finds no more comfort in anything than he does the embrace of someone he loves. After a parting? Fuck. What pride does he have left? Maruki knows all of it. The world has ended again and again and again, and at the end of all of it, he's somewhere else - some new Hell, and always that one, same, familiar face.

[He'd rather be dead right now, but what else is new? He isn't. He's here.

[Maruki's arm slung around his shoulders, he returns the gesture in kind, though reaches with his free hand to grip the nape of his friend's neck, solid and sturdy. He looks him in the eye.]

Inevitable, as always.

[He drops his hand away from Maruki's neck, his arm away from Maruki's shoulders - but, the older man can keep hanging on as long as he'd like, really.]

This time...I remember at least a few others.

oh same hat! cw suicidal ideation too!!

[placation]

[ Somewhere in his mind, there is a moment that doesn't slot neatly into any timeline of any reality that he consciously remembers: High above Odaiba in the middle of the coldest night, flat on his back, tears in his eyes, reaching for the stars and wishing more than anything that he could be allowed to fall into his crumbling reality and die along with it.

Whatever that's about, Maruki's not entirely sure. But it stirs in him with Eren nearby, one soul brought back against its will singing out to another.

He keeps his arm around Eren's shoulders for a few moments longer before dropping away as well, but his grin doesn't fade. He vaguely recalls being so filled to the brim with wretched sorrow– but why? Does it matter anymore, now that Eren's here? ]

I remember– too much, I think. Is this how it always felt for you to have so much in your head? It's confusing, to say the least...

[ Because for all the ways they were so terribly the same, that was never one of them. Not until now, shattered fragments of memories of dreams of realities of dreams of memories piled atop one another like so many flakes of snow. A certain mental unsteadiness as he tries to ease into it. He braces a hand against a nearby stall, just in case. ]

[abandonhumanity]

[Eren lets out a short breath, momentarily closing his eyes as he nods, as if afflicted by whatever's caused Maruki to lean against the stall; he doesn't lean, himself.]

I guess it is. [Slowly, green eyes open - duller than they were, or maybe as dull as Maruki remembers, but still green, nonetheless.] Not just all that you've experienced, but others, too - countless others.

Imagine that for a minute...

[placation]

[ Maybe he got lucky, in the end. The collective unconscious was his to tap into and his to leave behind as he desired. Sift through someone's memories to find what would make them happiest, then move on to the next. They didn't linger with him, not in any real way. Not in the way Eren experienced. ]

I'm imagining, and it's a nightmare.

[ Inhale, hold. Exhale, hold. Always with the breathing.

His head aches, but that's nothing new, and for a quiet moment he only watches Eren. ]

You're– different. Than either of the ones that I know. [ Knew? No, present tense. They know one another everywhere, in every time, even when they aren't together. Maruki's sure of that. ] How?

[abandonhumanity]

[Always with the breathing, but...upon closer inspection, Eren isn't breathing...

[Therein lies the difference Maruki is searching for.

[They both knew he would die; Eren still dreads the reaction. Maruki cares. Eren believes that he loves him. He knows the grief that he's caused for so many others. What's one more, and yet...]

I'm dead. Actually dead. That might be it...

oh i can only recommend watching the full video when you wake : ))) Them

[placation]

[ If Maruki only had memories of his life in Tokyo up until Christmas Eve, he might crumble into grief. Maybe if he only had those memories, and then the ones from a medieval village in the space between waking and dreams. But he has so much more than that, the knowledge of the realities they've inhabited together, separately – the cyclical nature of life and death, love and grief, memory and consciousness – the sea of mankind's hearts to which they'll all return – the Paths – the Aetherial Sea – everything – all of it– ]

We die, but we don't.

[ Stated softly, simply, with a smile that's more peaceful than anything else. ]

You're dead, but you're not. You're here. We both are. Maybe I'm dead too. Who knows?

[ And then, because he knows his friend: ]

How does it feel?

cw: suicidal ideation

[abandonhumanity]

[He's dead, but he's not. How does it feel?

[The same way it always feels to be awake. It's always been Hell, hasn't it? Eren was never satisfied - never can be, maybe, because he still isn't. Memories endure, always, many more terrible than beautiful. There is no death - no peace - for people like Eren and Maruki. He'll struggle to accept that forever, maybe; he's lived so many forevers, already.

[Eren doesn't breathe. At least, there's that.

[His response, finally, perhaps unsatisfactory:]

I wish it would stick.

[Still. He's glad to see Maruki.]

Clearly, that's just not how it works.

[placation]

[ That's the thing, though – no response that Eren has ever given him has been unsatisfactory.

If it's how he feels, then it's how he feels. Maruki has never been in the habit of trying to force him to feel any other way than he already does. ]

It will, one day. Somewhere, sometime. Just not right now. Unfortunately, you're stuck with me instead.

[ His teasing grin returns for that, and it feels like lightly bantering each other over stew before everything went to hell, it feels like gently feeling out the edges of a new bond while wandering through a tea festival–

He probably saw Eren only yesterday – maybe even only minutes ago – and he's missed him so much.

He kicks a leg out from where he's still leaning heavily against the stall, nudges Eren's shin with the toe of his shoe. ]

Maybe you brought me here to say goodbye?

[abandonhumanity]

To you? [Eren cocks an eyebrow.] I'm not sure that's possible.

[No, Maruki has never asked anything of Eren that he wasn't capable of giving; didn't ask him for much at all, really, but gave him plenty - gives, really.

[Eren puts his hands in his pockets. In another reality, it's a black and white track suit. Today, it's his long black coat.]

We've never said goodbye before. I don't see why we should start now.

[placation]

[ Maruki knows Eren– knows several Erens– and this Eren is his friend, as they all are, but still new to him in some ways. His expressions are different, his stance. Maruki mirrors it, hands in his own pockets. He's not different at all, really. Years separated Eren in Somnius and Eren in 7. What separated Maruki? Forty days.

It only serves to make him feel more unstuck from time and place. And despite all he knows theoretically about realities, it's not a physical or mental sensation that he's used to. ]

You're right about that. I don't know why I'm trying to make sense of this, really...

[ A thumb dug into his temple, rubbing and kneading. He smiles at Eren through it. ]

Have you looked around at all? It's funny. We could share dreams or memories here. As if we need the help.

[abandonhumanity]

I met you in a dream. [Pause.] Once.

Then, my head was full of fake memories of you. I thought we grew up together. You did too, didn't you? [When they were hunters, he means.

[Looks like it's time for reminiscing now, instead. Eren starts moving toward the smell of food, not signs promising magical journeys.]

closed to forbiddenlore (AU)

[abandonhumanity]

[Why they're here, how they're here, where here is - Eren doesn't have the answer to those questions; there is, however, that pervasive sense of calm that seeps in through the humid evening air. Eren is dressed in his typical attire, baring some ornamentation from the respective Reiss and Ashengrotto families. Eren isn't a Reiss himself, but he acts on their behalf, and the marriage that Azul and Eren did eventually enter is founded on that connection.

[Founded, too, on not an insignificant amount of shared mischief, and perhaps a bit of mutual respect, by this point. Eren doesn't hate his husband - he just doesn't love him.

[Right?

[Even so, they're arm in arm as they enter the market, Eren pausing to take in all of the various colorful, glowing stalls.]

That's queer...

Where do you suppose we've ended up?

[forbiddenlore]

[While their marriage has helped him grow more familiar with things on land, it was still new overall, and at times overwhelming.

The brightness, the colors… the crowds. The latter of which had him politely holding onto his husband’s arm, nothing out of the norm appearance-wise, but internally he disliked being so needy.

Fortunately, his own curiosity proved a suitable distraction. Again, this was all very new to him. So while he didn’t venture far enough to be out of reach of Eren, he was curiously leaning to inspect this and that.]

I haven’t the foggiest. A market of some sort?

…Do terrestrial markets usually look like this?

[abandonhumanity]

[Eren feels the grip on his arm, uncharacteristic of Azul's usual touch - unless he's nervous, Eren realizes (perhaps for the first time). He pulls his arm just a little more snuggly toward himself, strengthening his grip on Azul as they begin to move through the market.]

It's definitely a market, but not like one I've ever seen...

[They're in a marginally more modern setting than Eren and Azul are used to, though he hasn't quite noticed that, yet.]

Weren't we just underwater...?

[forbiddenlore]

I… I don’t remember- it’s all rather hazy…

[He thought about it and… yes, the last thing he reneged they were underwater, weren’t they?

But that brings an all new concern to the forefront of his mind, and he pulls away to start frantically padding his jacket for something.]

I don’t have my potions on me.

[That was… less than ideal in a place so unfamiliar- especially of they didn’t know how they got her or when the last time he theoretically took his potion.

If he wasn’t already cold-blooded, his blood would be running cold right now.]

[abandonhumanity]

[Ah, dear, yes. The potions. Azul won't do well without them for too long, Eren knows. It does press some urgency to return home, even through the hazy contentment of the evening's spell. Eren's eyes sharpen as the flicker over in Azul's direction.]

Stay calm. [There's some edge to his tone, but he isn't being impatient.] Do you know how much time you might have left?

[forbiddenlore]

[He took a moment to compose himself, Eren was right, panicking wouldn’t solve anything.

Or at least succumbing to his panic wouldn’t. He was absolutely capable of panicking and being fully functional at the same time. It was called multitasking, and it just so happened to be a speciality of his.

So he looked himself over for any signs of transformation. His arms were clear, legs still infuriatingly rigid, skin still that Sandy human color.]

Provided there’s no signs of that I’m reverting on my face, I should have twenty-four hours at least, three to four days at most.

[He stepped back closer to Eren and glanced over at the stalls.]

It’s a long shot, but if this is a market, perhaps we might find a vial here? Or even just the reagents so I can make something myself.

[abandonhumanity]

[Azul knows a lot more about potions and potion-making than Eren does. Maybe he can indeed find the ingredients.]

What would you need?

[forbiddenlore]

It depends. It’s unlikely they’ll have what I need for the transformation potion, it’s difficult and costly in general, but potions for land breathing are made made of more common reagents.

[and once more he takes hold of his husband’s arm, ready to resume their leisurely stroll.]

Let’s go browsing, shall we?

[abandonhumanity]

[Azul is so good at acting composed that it's hard to tell if he's actually still nervous at all, but Eren can't help but assume. Tightening his grip on his husband again, he moves them down the row of stalls; looking at the signs, however...]

Dreams...

Memories? [A glance at Azul, asking an unspoken question - what in the Hell is that supposed to mean?

[The principles remind him, vaguely, of things the Founder's power is supposedly able to influence, though he's never been allowed to try...]

Hold on. Let's look...[And they move toward the memory booth.]

[forbiddenlore]

[Azul followed Eren's gaze, curiously. That was... unusual, but he supposed not entirely unheard of. He was quiet for a moment as he thought things over, then whispered to his husband.]

Well, if we're to get what we need we will need some money.

[And he leans in, ready to try and upsell one of his memories. He had a number he'd rather forget, and if he could turn a profit at the same time then he was going to absolutely go for it.]

[abandonhumanity]

[Eren is less eager to sell memories - there's no telling if the memory he tries selling will be his own. Leaning in toward his husband, he murmurs a question into his ear:]

Do you have one to sell?